What he doesn't deserve is to have the government make an "example" of him; nobody deserves to be treated differently under our justice system just because they happen to be one of the first to commit (or be caught for) a specific violation.
Mitnick deserves to go to jail and pay a pretty big fine after recieving a speedy trial and being found guilty under the same system that would try his neighbor if they got caught stealing car stereos. That's not what's happening here.
Our justice system isn't as blind as we like to pretend it is.
I mean, why do all these places feel the need to ship $8 with UPS when they could get away with 80 cents via USPS? It's not like I'm ordering something really expensive here, I just want a stupid CD....
I wonder if MS has any real-world statistics concerning how much of a load NT has been able to handle in the past. I mean, what's download.com run on? Is it NT?
You know, this explains why the government stopped bitching about RSA and dumped any legal action against the PGP folks all of the sudden a couple of years back. I suppose NSA figured this out and decided to keep it to themselves....
No, I'm not going to kill myself trying to get in opening night -- I'll probably go to a matinee on Wednesday or something. Don't worry, it'll still be packed to the gills.
All of these folks who are getting their expectation so far up, though, are in for a bit of a disappointment. I mean, it's still a movie. I've talked to people who seem to think that this will be the one that will result in a "Book of George" being added to the Bible or that Christ will time the second coming so he can get in line for opening night...
That said, I gotta admit that the trailers produced a level of interest in me that I've never really felt for a film. More than just being willing to see it, I'm actually wanting to. The interest around the office is interesting, too; after I first played the trailer, a whole group people started coming by and asking if they could see it, including our general manager...
Why is there a warning that there's an article on slashdot that "has some kind of techie stuff" included in it? I mean, I'm so used to the page that I probably wouldn't notice immediately, but the masthead does still read "News for Nerds", right?
I mean, we have to take the occassional break from making fun of Bill "Richboy" Gates and beating up on Jesse Berst to still do geek-type stuff on occassion, don't we? I'd think so.
Now that I'm done abusing Rob (for now), here's my constructive observation:
I've always argued that games were vital to Linux because of the user base and notoriety that they bring, as well as enhancing my ability to kill time at the office. This article, however, point out another big advantage that I hadn't really considered before: Linux games spur technical enhancements.
I feel stupid for now adding this to my list of "Why I like games" before, but it's up there next to number one right now. Hey, you could even argue that games are what drive us to get better and better computers: I mean, who needs a 450Mhz k6-2 to run Word Perfect or that other word processor from those guys in Washington?
Well, it's not as if all that $30 billion is going directly to the incinirator that's used to heat la casa de Gates, either. Likely, that money, like the cash being spent for Y2K, will be getting shoveled back into the pockets of the programmers and managers who oversee the tweaks, and then invested back into the economy as taxes and spending.
Stuff like this, which seems to suggest that the money will vanish from the face of the earth instead of actually creating new jobs, pisses me off something royal.
Besides, $30,000,000,000 seems like a pretty fair price to pay to get some competition back into the world of computer software, instead of just having one company take over any sector they'd like on a whim. Result: we get better technology and more jobs. Hell, it's a sort of income redistribution for nerds: Getting it out of the hands of the pointy-hairs and the corporations and forking it over to us.
Hell, I've turned down jobs because they promised to be *less fun* than the one I have now; money isn't everything, especially if you hate your job the way I hated my last one. I mean, just imagine admining NT -- getting paged at night two or three times a week 'cause IIS died, etc.
Even in the job I'm in now, which is at a mostly-NT shop, I'll only work on projects that are based around Linux or some other stable operating system. I want to do cool things, not put out a bunch of fires!
Linux restores the good 'ol days where the OS didn't try to keep you from working.
I feel isolated and alone 'cause I *didn't* hate high school.
Sure, I remember a lot of bad times; times when administrators and teachers picked on me and my friends for not falling into line, times when the jocks and rich kids got special treatment, times when I got made fun of...
Overall, though, high school was fun. I remember laying out in the sun with my friends, water-gun fights (probably banned now, eh?), bowling, Denny's at all hours, parties, and just plain hanging out.
I see all of this angst dripping around here, and I almost feel like I have to defend my experience because it didn't suck. And yeah, I was in the dweeb clique -- RPGs, first person shooter games, trench coats et. al....
Really? Well, point out to your pal that he's not in high school anymore, and suggest this response:
"Please don't speak to me."
That's the one thing I really love about college over high school: you have rights. Nobody can force you to do anything, and if they try to (say they're a prof and therefore have some power over you), you can always go to the Dean and threaten a lawsuit. Watch 'em scurry for cover.
Jesus, I'm beginning to feel a bit guilty now about enjoying high school as much as I did. Is there anyone else out there who doesn't think that high school caused them life-long psychological damage?
Sure, I was a geek. Sure, I was in the outcast group (outcast group; is that an oxymoron?). Hell, based on the outwear choices of most of my friends in high school, I'll even say I was in the "trench coat mafia" of my school.
Hell, we even experimented with explosives (with full cooperation of our chemistry teacher, who launched the Friday Afternoon Blow-Up Club for us). I mean, at times HS was petty, and at times I definately felt misunderstood or bullied by my peer or adults, but the happy memories are in the overwhelming majority: hanging out with my compadres at Denny's late nights, bowling, parties, cheap theatre movies, sneaking off campus for lunch, fooling around while the girlfriend's parents were away for a few hours...
I'm not sure, then, why I had a blast in high school. Based on everything I've been reading on/. lately, I should have felt like a disaffected loner.
Can anyone back me up? Did anyone else have a good time in high school?
Well, I guess all that "business" and "money" were too much for Diamond's business model. Ah well, I'll feel just as at home buying from one of their competitors who don't try to pull this shit.
The only real advantage I see the Leatherman having is that this thing looks like it would be really uncomfortable to carry around in your pocket -- at least the Leatherman is fairly smooth when you fold it down.
Besides, to tell the truth, I don't think I'd ever need to *use* the extra tools (yeah, I know that's not the point -- it's just having them that makes you have GeekStatus(tm) ). I really only use my Leatherman for fixing hardware at home/work, so the needle-nose, the knife and the phillips are only tools that see a lot of action...
It's okay to drink and sysadmin, so long as you don't change the root password while you're completely blitzed.
That's the biggest "oopsie" I've ever performed on my Linux box: I got involved with that other great export from Chippewa Falls (and no, I don't mean Cray) and apparently changed the root password. The next morning, I went to get root to do something or other, and couldn't remember what I'd changed it to.
Maybe someone could come up with a handy-dandy serial breathalizer; when you go to su, you have to blow less than a.15 (hey, you're not driving a car or anything...)
Okay, it seems like the Onion with a slightly more nerd-oriented approach. It's funny, but they're just asking for legal trouble -- their front page is a pretty obvious rip-off of the Onion's.
Besides, if you're going to put that much work into something, why not make it look unique?
My uncle's Porsche is much easier to handle than my more typical vehicle (think '89 Mustang).
So, the answer is yes. We just have to figure out how to make it so (no Picard reference intended, but since you insist, the Enterprise computer rates as both powerful and easy to use, don't it?)
They're right about one thing: Linux (okay, damn it, Linux-based operating systems in general) have too many damn programs. In some areas, there are simply too many potentially useful and yet obscured programs that you won't find unless you're looking for them.
I don't know if documentation is the full answer; I'd like to see the vendors get a tad more choosy about the programs they include -- I like xbill as much as the next guy, but how many or that level game do we really need? After all, if I miss something, I can always go out and get it on my own.
And yes, I know that I could simply choose not to install them. Usually, however, I'm not looking to spend time choosing programs to install on Linux; I'm looking to *use* Linux.
This addresses an underlying fear a lot of us entering the tech industry just now have.
I sat at my desk during my internship at Cray last summer and watched a few of my coworkers become (or who had already became) seriously outmoded. I watched, just as intently, as a round of layoffs came around, mandated by SGI. I saw people who, once their contributions were laid out, had done some awfully exciting things back 10-20 years ago when Seymour and Friends were making the fastest computers anyone had ever dreamed of. They retired before they could get axed -- I ate a lot of retirement party cake.
It made me seriously wonder about my future. It's easy to start out at the cutting edge and at high salaries, but it can apparently be near impossible to stay there. The pitfalls are everywhere -- starting a family and not devoting 90% of your time to computers anymore seems to be a rather significant one. Others had just gotten stuck in a rut, missing one too many upgrades.
Those few whom I looked on as having led a worthwhile life (and this scares the shit out of me) were the pointy-hairs. They all had families, good vacations under their belts (backpacking in Europe, not visiting Comdex), secure retirements. Many of them had started out as tech people and moved "up" the ladder.
So, is it possible to be a technical person all your life and still live? In the case of the first generation of computer techs, I'd have to say almost certainly not. That frightens me.
I've been telling everyone for months that Palm was going to fail because of this very issue -- they were going to end up like Apple did in the PC market with 5% of all sales or somesuch, just because WinCE devices would be so prolific and so cheap.
Teaming up with cell phone companies, on the other hand, is a stroke of genius. Wireless... Yum. They're going to leave WinCE crap in the dirt. I mean, compare the sales pitch: We let you schedule yourself, plus access your computer from anywhere vs. we have color!!!
Except for that one gomer who posted a while ago saying that he wanted his palm to act like a mini-PC, and thus had to have color, I thing the choice is pretty clear...
...but I find it amazing that you can defend MS with a straight face, especially considering that one of the posts on your/.-lookalike homepage is about how you had to fight with MS tech support to fix your web server...
"The Linux kernal limited itself to 970 megs of RAM"... Say WHAT?
Really; the Winbox had most of its services shut off, while the Linbox was running SMB, NFS, etc. My guess is that they were probably hitting those other services while they were taking the numbers.
Besides, this runs contrary to every other (non-MS paid-for) study I've seen. Mayhaps someone should do some independent verification. Be sure check if the Windows numbers were a "demo".
Hey, they lied to Justice; why wouldn't they lie to us?
You know, this is the first place where I've seen a serious discussion of copyright abolishion that seemed really well-reasoned.
He's right, though: trying to prevent copying in an era where copying is sooo easy for everyone to do is pretty futile. I mean, I don't need a printing press to distribute my opinions anymore (I only need slashdot... heh heh).
Slashdot Mirror
Yup, he deserves to have the law land on him.
What he doesn't deserve is to have the government
make an "example" of him; nobody deserves to be
treated differently under our justice system just
because they happen to be one of the first to
commit (or be caught for) a specific violation.
Mitnick deserves to go to jail and pay a pretty
big fine after recieving a speedy trial and being
found guilty under the same system that would try
his neighbor if they got caught stealing car
stereos. That's not what's happening here.
Our justice system isn't as blind as we like to
pretend it is.
----
----
----
Forget Mindcraft, this is where it really counts.
----
----
No, I'm not going to kill myself trying to get in opening night -- I'll probably go to a matinee on Wednesday or something. Don't worry, it'll still be packed to the gills.
All of these folks who are getting their expectation so far up, though, are in for a bit of a disappointment. I mean, it's still a movie. I've talked to people who seem to think that this will be the one that will result in a "Book of George" being added to the Bible or that Christ will time the second coming so he can get in line for opening night...
That said, I gotta admit that the trailers produced a level of interest in me that I've never really felt for a film. More than just being willing to see it, I'm actually wanting to. The interest around the office is interesting, too; after I first played the trailer, a whole group people started coming by and asking if they could see it, including our general manager...
I just hope it doesn't suck.
----
I mean, we have to take the occassional break from making fun of Bill "Richboy" Gates and beating up on Jesse Berst to still do geek-type stuff on occassion, don't we? I'd think so.
Now that I'm done abusing Rob (for now), here's my constructive observation:
I've always argued that games were vital to Linux because of the user base and notoriety that they bring, as well as enhancing my ability to kill time at the office. This article, however, point out another big advantage that I hadn't really considered before: Linux games spur technical enhancements.
I feel stupid for now adding this to my list of "Why I like games" before, but it's up there next to number one right now. Hey, you could even argue that games are what drive us to get better and better computers: I mean, who needs a 450Mhz k6-2 to run Word Perfect or that other word processor from those guys in Washington?
----
Stuff like this, which seems to suggest that the money will vanish from the face of the earth instead of actually creating new jobs, pisses me off something royal.
Besides, $30,000,000,000 seems like a pretty fair price to pay to get some competition back into the world of computer software, instead of just having one company take over any sector they'd like on a whim. Result: we get better technology and more jobs. Hell, it's a sort of income redistribution for nerds: Getting it out of the hands of the pointy-hairs and the corporations and forking it over to us.
We shoulda done this years ago.
----
isn't everything, especially if you hate your job the way I hated my last one. I mean, just
imagine admining NT -- getting paged at night two or three times a week 'cause IIS died, etc.
Even in the job I'm in now, which is at a mostly-NT shop, I'll only work on projects that
are based around Linux or some other stable operating system. I want to do cool things, not
put out a bunch of fires!
Linux restores the good 'ol days where the OS didn't try to keep you from working.
----
high school.
Sure, I remember a lot of bad times; times when
administrators and teachers picked on me and my
friends for not falling into line, times when the
jocks and rich kids got special treatment, times
when I got made fun of...
Overall, though, high school was fun. I remember
laying out in the sun with my friends, water-gun
fights (probably banned now, eh?), bowling,
Denny's at all hours, parties, and just plain
hanging out.
I see all of this angst dripping around here, and
I almost feel like I have to defend my experience
because it didn't suck. And yeah, I was in the
dweeb clique -- RPGs, first person shooter games,
trench coats et. al....
Someone back me up here....
----
school anymore, and suggest this response:
"Please don't speak to me."
That's the one thing I really love about college
over high school: you have rights. Nobody can
force you to do anything, and if they try to (say
they're a prof and therefore have some power
over you), you can always go to the Dean and
threaten a lawsuit. Watch 'em scurry for cover.
----
about enjoying high school as much as I did. Is
there anyone else out there who doesn't think that
high school caused them life-long psychological
damage?
Sure, I was a geek. Sure, I was in the outcast
group (outcast group; is that an oxymoron?). Hell,
based on the outwear choices of most of my friends
in high school, I'll even say I was in the "trench
coat mafia" of my school.
Hell, we even experimented with explosives (with
full cooperation of our chemistry teacher, who
launched the Friday Afternoon Blow-Up Club for
us). I mean, at times HS was petty, and at times I
definately felt misunderstood or bullied by my
peer or adults, but the happy memories are in the
overwhelming majority: hanging out with my
compadres at Denny's late nights, bowling,
parties, cheap theatre movies, sneaking off campus
for lunch, fooling around while the girlfriend's
parents were away for a few hours...
I'm not sure, then, why I had a blast in high /. lately, I should have felt like a
school. Based on everything I've been
reading on
disaffected loner.
Can anyone back me up? Did anyone else have a good
time in high school?
----
----
The only real advantage I see the Leatherman having is that this thing looks like it would be really uncomfortable to carry around in your pocket -- at least the Leatherman is fairly smooth when you fold it down.
Besides, to tell the truth, I don't think I'd ever need to *use* the extra tools (yeah, I know that's not the point -- it's just having them that makes you have GeekStatus(tm) ). I really only use my Leatherman for fixing hardware at home/work, so the needle-nose, the knife and the phillips are only tools that see a lot of action...
----
We the People leads off the American Constitution. The Declaration starts off "In Congress..."
----
That's the biggest "oopsie" I've ever performed on my Linux box: I got involved with that other great export from Chippewa Falls (and no, I don't mean Cray) and apparently changed the root password. The next morning, I went to get root to do something or other, and couldn't remember what I'd changed it to.
Maybe someone could come up with a handy-dandy serial breathalizer; when you go to su, you have to blow less than a .15 (hey, you're not driving a car or anything...)
----
----
Besides, if you're going to put that much work into something, why not make it look unique?
----
So, the answer is yes. We just have to figure out how to make it so (no Picard reference intended, but since you insist, the Enterprise computer rates as both powerful and easy to use, don't it?)
----
I don't know if documentation is the full answer; I'd like to see the vendors get a tad more choosy about the programs they include -- I like xbill as much as the next guy, but how many or that level game do we really need? After all, if I miss something, I can always go out and get it on my own.
And yes, I know that I could simply choose not to install them. Usually, however, I'm not looking to spend time choosing programs to install on Linux; I'm looking to *use* Linux.
----
I sat at my desk during my internship at Cray last summer and watched a few of my coworkers become (or who had already became) seriously outmoded. I watched, just as intently, as a round of layoffs came around, mandated by SGI. I saw people who, once their contributions were laid out, had done some awfully exciting things back 10-20 years ago when Seymour and Friends were making the fastest computers anyone had ever dreamed of. They retired before they could get axed -- I ate a lot of retirement party cake.
It made me seriously wonder about my future. It's easy to start out at the cutting edge and at high salaries, but it can apparently be near impossible to stay there. The pitfalls are everywhere -- starting a family and not devoting 90% of your time to computers anymore seems to be a rather significant one. Others had just gotten stuck in a rut, missing one too many upgrades.
Those few whom I looked on as having led a worthwhile life (and this scares the shit out of me) were the pointy-hairs. They all had families, good vacations under their belts (backpacking in Europe, not visiting Comdex), secure retirements. Many of them had started out as tech people and moved "up" the ladder.
So, is it possible to be a technical person all your life and still live? In the case of the first generation of computer techs, I'd have to say almost certainly not. That frightens me.
----
Teaming up with cell phone companies, on the other hand, is a stroke of genius. Wireless... Yum. They're going to leave WinCE crap in the dirt. I mean, compare the sales pitch: We let you schedule yourself, plus access your computer from anywhere vs. we have color!!!
Except for that one gomer who posted a while ago saying that he wanted his palm to act like a mini-PC, and thus had to have color, I thing the choice is pretty clear...
----
----
Really; the Winbox had most of its services shut off, while the Linbox was running SMB, NFS, etc. My guess is that they were probably hitting those other services while they were taking the numbers.
Besides, this runs contrary to every other (non-MS paid-for) study I've seen. Mayhaps someone should do some independent verification. Be sure check if the Windows numbers were a "demo".
Hey, they lied to Justice; why wouldn't they lie to us?
----
He's right, though: trying to prevent copying in an era where copying is sooo easy for everyone to do is pretty futile. I mean, I don't need a printing press to distribute my opinions anymore (I only need slashdot... heh heh).
----